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Ben Goldacre Interview

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October 17th, 2008 3 comments link to (permalink) posted by david

I’ve just finished Reading Ben Goldacre’s book, ‘Bad Science’, that lambasts various forms of quackery and pseudo science. Here is a New Scientist interview with him. I have also embedded a clip of Gillian McKeith a well know TV presenter in the UK, who encourages people to eat healthily, but does so in a way that is wrong and deceptive. A whole chapter of Bad Science is devoted to her.

For example, McKeith calls herself (or used to call, before the Advertising Standards Authority had a draft adjudication against her) a doctor and refers to her patients. She is neither a medical doctor, nor does she have a PhD from an accredited university. She does have an accreditation from a Nutrition institute that Goldacre managed to obtain membership for his dead cat for $100. The award hangs in his toilet.

Gillian McKeith is our latest recipient of the Smashing Telly FEBL (Fucking Entertaining Big Lie) award, which consists of being tagged FEBL

tags: FEBL pseudo science science

3 responses so far »

  • Mark Thomas : Oct 17, 2008 at 2:34 pm

    Man, the Gillian clip made me cringe!

  • Mac : Oct 18, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    You should watch her show, a mixture of high volume quackery and ritual humiliation of her “patients”. Kind of like a cross between David Brent and Torquemada.

  • Les : Oct 18, 2008 at 8:45 pm

    nice little interview with ben goldacre. you should definitely check out his blog “bad science”

    http://www.badscience.net/

    and read what he has to say about the medicalization of everyday life.